ANT205H5 Lecture Notes - Disarticulation, Taphonomy, Pickup Truck
Document Summary
Forensic taphonomy - the study of events that occurred after a person has died. What happens to a body upon death and discovery. We are looking at the postmortem changes to the bone essentially. We study taphonomy because? to understand the position, color, weathering, erosion of remains and see if they are consistent with where the body and how the body was found. The broken bones, and the taphonomic changes are consistent with the informants tip of what the suspect did. The defense claimed that the defendant did not kill the victim of this case. Trauma however was caused by dragging the victim behind a pickup truck on a gravel road. However, the was no erosion of the bone on the back of the skull, no gravel pitting or embedded gravel on the bone. The taphonimic changes were certainly not consistent with the defendants claim.
